It’s been a while since we’ve covered our favourite watchmaker, so we’re pleased to announce the Kisai Rogue Wood, from Tokyoflash. It combines one of their trademark initially-hard-to-read time-telling watchfaces,

Tag Archives: future

The AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System, shown above, is basically a ‘feeding tube in reverse.’ Instead of pumping food in, it pumps food out. It was created with a pretty good purpose, although I can’t help but feel that this might end up being misused by people who put too much weight on their, well, weight.

Anyway, the food-reversal pump was developed by Segway inventor Dean Kamen and a team of doctors who wanted to help people struggling with over-eating. What it does is pump out 30% of the person’s stomach contents twenty minutes after they eat so that all those extra calories won’t be digested. Sounds cool and all, but the big catch? The ‘installation’ and usage of the system involves creating a hole in your belly where the food is supposed to pass out. Doesn’t sound very appealing now, does it?

Prostheses have come a long way, thanks to the work of dedicated researchers and doctors. We’ve seen limbs that look real and limbs that look like they came from the set of Terminator. And just when we think we’ve seen all there is to see, Kaylene Kau comes along with her Tentacle Prosthetic design.

It’s bizarre, it’s weird, and it’s definitely unconventional. It also happens to be pretty dexterous.

When you think of fashion from the future, flashy, ultra-modern stuff that’ll probably glow bright with LED lights or something when worn might probably come to mind. But not for French designer Pauline Marcombe, who thinks that everything’s going back to the basics and to the all-natural–starting with these futuristic T-shirts. Or should I say tops? From the looks of things, it probably isn’t very fair or sensible to call her design a ‘T-shirt.’

It follows the trend of fashion getting more complicated and uncomfortable to wear. Have you seen those sky-high heelless shoes that some ‘fashionable’ women are wearing nowadays? They can call it whatever they like, but I call it a broken ankle just waiting to happen. Pauline’s design is called the Prototype Triangle Numéro 1, which is crafted out of laser-cut wooden triangles all linked together with wire.

Current generation consoles are old. Hella old. It used to be that we’d get new ones on a 5 year cycle, but it looks now like it’s a 7 year cycle we’re on. The next Xbox for example is rumoured to be scheduled for 2013, a little over 7 years since it was launched at the end of 2005. We don’t know what specs it’ll have, but if some folk at the University of Utah have their way, the next generation of controllers could have some added haptic feedback, besides the usual rumbling. The idea is that the thumbsticks could have a “round, red “tactor” that looks like the eraser-head-shaped IBM TrackPoint or pointing stick now found on a number of laptop computer brands.” This extra nubbin would tug at your fingertips in different directions, “simulating the tug of a fishing line, the feeling of ocean waves or the recoil of a gun. If a gamer’s avatar runs into a wall, the tactor under the thumb moves back to mimic impact. Both tactors can move from side to side to mimic ocean waves.”

There doesn’t seem to have been any actual contact between the researchers and anyone at Microsoft or Sony, so there’s no certainty any of this will ever make its way into our hands. But with several months before anything is due, who knows what ideas might trickle into the right offices…

Much as the industry is constantly evolving in terms of faster computers and ever more ingenious and polished operating systems, the very basic interaction between man and machine has remained pretty constant over the last decades. You still have a flat screen projecting flat images at a user sitting in front of it. Sure, some of these images may depict a three dimensional object, but the images themselves are still 2D. A project by Jinha Lee and Cati Boulanger, former intern and researcher respectively, at Microsoft Applied Sciences would change all that. They’re using a special transparent OLED screen from Samsung and a series of sensors, along with custom software that reshuffles the keyboard to the back of the screen. So in a way, you’re now working with your hands inside the virtual desktop and you’re free to manipulate what you see. Sensors detect your motions and even where your head is in relation to the screen so as to maintain proper perspective at all times (think of that scene in the latest Mission: Impossible).

There are no concrete plans to put this into production but as a proof of concept allows us to play and discover potential new interfaces for systems of tomorrow. Watch it in action below.

We’ve written about the shoes from Back to the Future II on more than one occasion. Mostly because it’s one of the few “futuristic” technologies that might have a chance of being made by 2015. A little while back we showed you a custom shoe that was made using an Arduino board. It was cool, but not exactly practical for wearing. So who do we look to for a real pair of these self-lacing shoes? Nike.

Yes, the company that “made” those sneakers in the movie have actually patented the idea. Specifically, they’ve received a patent for:

An article of footwear with an automatic lacing system is disclosed. The automatic lacing system provides a set of straps that can be automatically opened and closed to switch between a loosened and tightened position of the upper. The article further includes an automatic ankle cinching system that is configured to automatically adjust an ankle portion of the upper.

When we posted our last update on the Martin Jetpack Ductedfanpack about a year ago, they were looking at producing around 10 units at $100,000 each. In that quantity and price, it didn’t seem like something that was particularly realistic. At the end of last month the Telegraph reported that Martin Aircraft Company had teamed up with an unnamed international aircraft company, and that the new partnership had secured enough capital to begin producing 500 jetpacks a year at a cost of around $75,000 each. Yes, it’s a lot, but come on, it’s a personal jetpack, and it may actually be a practical one too:

In the future, all of our food will come in tubes. Why? Because that’s just how things work in the future (the pre-replicator future, obviously). And I know you’re thinking, “wow! That’s convenient!” But only uncultured heathens would eat food straight out of the tube. I mean, spluh! This is why you need a food printer, and MIT is getting way ahead of the future by starting to work on one in the present.

The Cornucopia personal food factory is essentially just a 3D printer that uses cartridges of food instead of cartridges of plastic or whatever. So like, if you feel like an apple, you just put an apple cartridge in, run the apple program, and wait while printer extrudes an apple shape. Heating and cooling elements in the print heads do all of the cooking for you, and by combining different cartridges in a single dish you can potentially create some truly horrific meals.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.